Welcome, everyone!

NEXT PERFORMANCES

New CD release: The Metropolitan Opera 50th Anniversary gala

The Metropolitan Opera has announced the release of its 50th Anniversary Gala on a 3-CD set featuring the artists that performed on May 7, 2017, when the Met celebrated its golden anniversary in Lincoln Center.

Upcoming fall and winter performances

Isabel Leonard has a busy and exciting fall and winter ahead. On November 9, 10 and 11, in an all-Ravel concert, she sings Concepcion in L’heure espagnole at LA Opera. Next, she appears in Fort Worth to sing a concert on November 16 and afterwards she travels back to San Francisco to sing Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate and the solo in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 on November 24, 25 and 26, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Orchestra.

Her final performance of the year, on December 29, takes her back to the Metropolitan Opera to become Cherubino from Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro, one of her signature roles, for which she’s received fantastic critical acclaim, the New York Times stating “when Richard Eyre’s 2014 production of “Figaro” returned to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera with the wonderful Isabel Leonard again in that role, Cherubino ruled. Ms. Leonard’s lustrous, full-bodied mezzo-soprano and her exquisite comic timing seized attention at every turn.” The performances will go on into 2018, when she sings at the Met on January 4, takes a break to sing two Bernstein recitals at Park Avenue Armory on January 5 and 7 and then continues as Cherubino on January 10, 13 and 19.

IN THE PRESS

When Washington National Opera presents one of opera’s top examples of musical comedy next spring, it’s only fitting that the production will star a singer whose background sounds as ready-made for Broadway as for the opera house. Isabel Leonard, who will sing the lead role of Rosina in Gioachino Rossini’s laugh-filled romp The Barber of Seville, attended the Joffrey Ballet School, went to the high school made famous in the movie Fame, and once stepped into a key role in Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town when the show’s Broadway cast came to the San Francisco Symphony to do semi-staged performances minus one of their actresses.

At the Metropolitan Opera, Isabel is known for the high bar she’s set for stage business and physical comedy in what can otherwise be the rather earthbound business of opera. The twist is that as an operatic mezzo-soprano, she follows the centuries-old convention of opera mezzos playing both women and men according to the desires of the composers. She once even played both a young boy and a grown woman in the same evening in the case of two contrasting one-act operas by Maurice Ravel. But a passion for exploring in greater depth the music of Bernstein in the centennial year of his birth also has her developing a full recital program of the surprising variety of Bernstein’s music, which she will bring to the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater prior to the opening of The Barber of Seville.

Recently I talked with Isabel by telephone in between her engagements around the country and internationally. Here are excerpts of our conversation:

David Rohde: Tell me how you got into ballet as a kid and what it brings to you now on the opera stage.

Isabel Leonard: I think just to have that physical discipline of dance from a very early age has always given me the ability to move. I know that might sound very simple or trite, but just the ability to move from point A to point B in such a way that we can feel your character’s frustration or whatever it might be, you’ve developed a vocabulary of expression that is coming from your body and not just from your voice. And not even meaning your singing voice, but your voice just as words.

How many years of training did you have at Joffrey?

I started when I was about five, and I was there, I think, until about 11 or 12. Right around the time when I had to make the decision as to whether I really wanted to do this or not.

Would you say that your ability to move on stage helps the other people on stage that you are singing an opera with?

I think so. I think that anything that you do on stage, if it is honest and true to the character that you are portraying, and if you are being open and generous to your colleagues, then nothing but good can come from that – for everyone. I think that there’s always a positive ricochet effect.